Hippie flashdance

I’m going to guess this was 1979, which would make me about the same age R is now. Among the interesting things about this photograph is how remarkably similar my sister (the one on the left) and I look in it. The similarities continued throughout high school, even into college a little bit. Once, when we were trying on clothes at the mall, the salesgirl kept bringing us each others’ items. She thought we were twins. But now, sometimes people don’t even believe that we are sisters.

Second, R looks a lot like me at that age, though it looks like my mom tried to flat iron and then feather my hair. The 70s rocked the house.

Third, I love the blouses. The mother-daughter-matching-vibe doesn’t really jazz me up, but I wish I had that little top for R. She would look adorable, especially with the addition of a cute kerchief for her head. My hippie husband would LOVE it.

Fourth, my knees are all scraped up in this JC Penney special. Why? I don’t know. My mom can’t remember.

Fifth - my mom had highlights? What?

Finally - We are taking R to get her first (and long overdue) haircut tomorrow. Will she allow the stylist near her head? Will she require a parent to hold her? Will she be enchanted and enthralled by the snacks/juice/toys/movies they will offer? Will Mommy cry at the loss of the baby curls and sweet, soft blonde locks? Tune in next week…

religion and politics

Jodi wrote last week, in response to what I thought was a bit of a snarky comment, about her hopes for her son.

A liberal vegetarian Jew, Jodi has strong opinions and isn’t afraid to share them in a usually humorous and fun-to-read way. Her post got me thinking about what I want for R (and how do I parent her to get my desired outcome?).

I am a mostly liberal Christian, though I identify more with the “mostly liberal” part than the Christian part. I was raised very Catholic by a very Catholic mother who later divorced my Lutheran father and remarried and has thus been excommunicated. We went to church every Sunday and holy day (All Saint’s Day anyone?), attended Sunday School through our confirmation as juniors in high school and observed most Catholic rituals religiously. Ha-ha.

I attended church sporadically as an adult. When I met Dave, raised Lutheran, we would occasionally attend services, his or mine, together. We were married by a Methodist minister who was a friend of Dave’s family. When I got pregnant, it was important to both of us to give our child some kind of faith base. Because my church would not allow Dave to fully participate, we chose to be Lutheran. How’s that for choosing a religion?

When it comes time for R to find her spiritual path, I do not plan to force her into anything. She can choose on her own. I will provide her with some sense of Christianity, but if she chooses to go a different direction, I will support that too.

Additionally, I was raised in a household that was apolitical. Voting was a private thing my parents kept to themselves the entire time we were growing up. I suspect they are both Republican. They have never expressed disappointment or sadness at having raised three liberal Democrats. We all found our own way. I like that model very much, though I don’t think it worked out well for my parents (from their point of view).

And maybe it will backfire on me too. But I want R to be her own person, have her own faith and values and politics. Even if that means her beliefs are diametrically opposed to mine.Though I would really prefer they weren’t. But I’d love her anyway.

just a quick note

Just wanted to say something about what happened at Northern Illinois yesterday. As the daughter and sister of NIU graduates, and someone who has attended many, many events on a campus just a short drive from where I grew up, I just feel so sad today.

When Virginia Tech happened, I was stunned, but it was so far away and I was so far removed from it. This hits way closer to home, figuratively and literally. I have such admiration for so many people involved in this situation. When I was in Nashville earlier this year, I attended an educational session on communicating in a crisis. Officials from Virginia Tech and Bluffton University both spoke on their experiences in the wake of their tragedies. I was so impressed and moved by the stories. And now I’m just saddened that it’s happening all over again, just 25 miles from the house my mother lives in today.

This scares me as a parent, as someone who works in higher education, as a former Illinoisan, as an American.

I love the ivory tower. I loved the college experience. I love visiting campuses now, seeing the students, all fresh-faced and idealistic and ready to conquer the world. It’s energizing and reinvigorating. That experience is about to be taken away from all of us who aren’t attending or working at a higher education institution. College campuses will turn into high security zones with armed guards, ID swipes and metal detectors in doorways and no access to the public. Like my high school. And the Pentagon.

Is this a good thing? Will it really make our kids safer? And how would I feel if R were a college student?

innocence

There is so much I want to tell R.

So much I want to tell her, but can’t. I don’t want to scare her.  Plus, she’s too young to understand. But I want her to know that she shouldn’t do this. That she can’t run out into the street in front of the house because this might happen. That she should always stay close to Mommy because people like this live in the world. That she can’t play outside alone because of this.

How do I keep her safe without taking away her innocence?

I started taking piano lessons when I was four years old. My teacher, Gayle, lived across the street from us. She had probably a dozen students, ranging in age from four to about 12. We had recitals at a local church twice a year, once at Christmas and once in the spring.

Jeanine was four years older than me, and I idolized her. She was pretty and friendly. She wore a maroon-colored dress to the Christmas recital in December 1982. And in February 1983, when I was six and she was ten, she was kidnapped, raped and murdered.

I don’t really remember my parents telling me what happened, but I assume that they did. I remember Gayle crying a lot. I remember seeing Jeanine’s parents on television. I remember never being left home alone. As the years went by, convictions were gained and overturned and new trials were ordered and pardons were granted and now, almost 25 years later, no one is paying for what he did to her.

When I was in sixth grade, I sat next to a boy named Shannon in Mr. Kallenbach’s math class. He had been held back once and was a year older than us. When May came around and we were all looking forward to going to middle school, Shannon went out to check the mail. He found a notice that he would be held back again. He waited until his mother was gone, then he shot himself in the head.

I remember the aftermath of this clearly. Since he lived in a neighborhood adjacent to mine, we knew within hours. They had counselors at school the next day. I remember crying out in the hallway outside Mrs. Doyle’s music class. I remember clutching my friends, feeling sad but not hysterical. My parents didn’t let me go to the funeral or visitation.

I suppose things like this are inevitable in any child’s life. I just wish I could protect R from it all. I wish she didn’t have to know that things like this happen. I wish, I wish, I wish. In the days after September 11, when Dave and I were newly engaged, I started to wonder why anyone would ever bring children into a world where something like that could happen. Where Darfur could happen. Where Rwanda could happen. Where Bosnia could happen.

I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe it’s to try to raise our children to do better, to be better. Maybe there’s no answer. Why did I decide to have children when just four years earlier I was certain I could not? I guess time dulls the horror. And what if everyone decided not to have children because bad things happen? That’s certainly not the answer.

But now we are left with explaining to our kids that bad things happen in this world, sometimes to good people and sometimes for no good reason and no fault of their own. I guess it’s all part of growing up.

please top all this llama drama

So I feel like the time is right to address recent drama going on in my life. If you click over to my (step) sister’s blog there, she’s written twice now about something very sad that’s happening in our family. My brother, her stepbrother (and her friend for years before my mother and her father were married), has decided to cut himself (and his new wife) off from the rest of the family for reasons that none of us seem to understand. Or really know, for that matter.

The day of the big blowup, my brother called me to “apologize for anything he’d done to alienate me.” Which of course, didn’t seem like much of an apology to me. I told him I was hurt that he’d skipped R’s christening, when we had people show up from Iowa, Missouri and Florida. Our minister even commented on the fact that my brother was a no-show (noting how sad it was). Brother’s response? He’d sent a gift.  I told him I’d rather he had shown up without a gift. He’s also continually criticized my child-rearing and, oddly, my husband’s fashion choices. But I didn’t bring those things up to him.

I told him that I thought it was good that he was getting all of this out in the open. That he was having a conversation with our mother that would lead to a more healthy, adult relationship that acknowledges fault on both sides and moves forward to grow more close.

He gave me lip service at the time, but has apparently disregarded my advice, sending my mother an e-mail saying that they would not be purchasing Christmas gifts for them and would not accept any in return. If gifts were sent, they would be returned. And his wife returned the birthday card and check my mother sent earlier this month.

I try to excuse his behavior in that he’s young, but he’s really not that young (25).  He’s certainly old enough to know better. And old enough to know that when he refuses to show up for family events (not just mine, even those hosted minutes from his apartment), it hurts people.

Some of the reasons he gave me when we spoke were not outrageous, I even agree with some of them. But I told him we all have to make sacrifices and accommodations because we are family, and while we might not love certain behavior, we love the people. I told my mother basically the same things.

I’m not sure where this is going to go. It makes me sad that R won’t be around her uncle very much. But I think I’ve done what I can. It’s up to them to bridge the gap. And I think I’m going to stay out of it.

The future, it is now

Not long after R. was born, someone took a picture of her, lying on my chest in the hospital, breastfeeding. I had one arm cradling her, and my other hand was resting near her face, in perfect view of the camera. The first thought that came to my head was, “my God, I have my mother’s hands.” 

It turns out, that’s not all my parents passed down to me. I find R’s full name (Mom loved to middle-name us) coming out of my mouth all the time. I find myself instituting rules because that was what my parents did. And honestly, I’m not too upset about the whole thing. I actually look forward to the day I can say “Because I said so.” Be afraid, R., be very afraid. 

I had a great childhood. I have wonderful memories of summer evenings playing wiffleball in the driveway, winter sledding trips to Philips Park and building leaf houses in the fall. I was raised with appropriate amounts of fear, love and respect for my parents – fear of disappointing them and a respect for their authority. They had high expectations, and I wanted nothing more in life than to fulfill them. 

We didn’t talk about politics and we never discussed major social issues like race or gender – we were left to form our own opinions on those subjects, based on the values they taught us. It was assumed we would go to college. So while a lot of people swear to God they will never become their parents (including me in my diary 18 years ago), I think that if I were as great at being a parent as my mom and dad were, R. will be in pretty good shape. 

Because I said so. 

This is in response to a writing challenge posted on The Mom’s Daily Dose Secret Awesome Group of Awesome Blogging Power posted by Jessica.

Stop the Abuse

From the original email:

On Thursday, September 27th, post about any abuse topic you care about - child abuse, domestic abuse, animal abuse, drug abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, political abuse - and let the world know you stand united with thousands of bloggers as part of the Bloggers Unite “Blog Against Abuse” campaign. Depending on your topic, you can even link to local, regional, national, or international organizations that you care about or support. Every post will count!

This is very timely. Though it’s not exactly a case of abuse, she was apparently killed by someone who knows her. I’ve written before about my own brush with domestic violence. I never really thought of it as domestic violence while it was going on. That was something that happened to other people. It happened to women who had no sense of self, no education, no self-esteem, no idea that there was any other way. It did not happen to me.

I was wrong. It happened to me. And it could happen to anyone. I thought I had too much respect for myself to ever be in such a situation. Again, I was wrong. It happens so quickly – one moment you are in a new relationship and giddy, a few weeks later you are sobbing in a corner and wondering how it came to this. Or it happens slowly, over time, with name-calling and isolation and then actual physical abuse.

I wish I had known several things before I met him. I wish I had known that I am a likable person, that I don’t need a man to define me and that the world won’t end if I leave. I wish every woman in the world knew that. But for now, I pray for Nailah Franklin’s family, and for the thousands of women out there like her. Like me.

Thanks to Rura and Missa for letting us know about this day. If you need help, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit this site for more resources.

 

Everybody’s crazy ’bout a mustached man

So my dad had a mustache for like the first 20 years of my life, but then shaved it off rather abruptly when I was in college. Now, I am trying really hard to remember what he looked like with the mustache and all I can remember are actual photographs I have of the stache. I can’t remember actually looking at my dad or having a conversation with him while he had a mustache. 

Is that weird?

Open Book

When I was a kid, I kept a diary (that’s probably shocking for a. a teenage girl who thought her handwriting was the bee’s knees and b. someone who currently keeps a diary and simply calls it something else and lets other people she doesn’t know – and some she does – read it).  

My first diary had a lock and it was blue with a picture of some horses on it, which was odd because I was never really around horses and never developed that odd fascination that a lot of elementary- and middle school-age girls develop with the horse. I even tried to disguise my diary as something else by writing “Moby Dick” on the spine in my nine-year-old handwriting and just leaving it on my closet bookshelf for all to find. 

I wrote things about going to my grandparents’ homes for the weekend or for Christmas and how my friend Lisa had bigger boobs than me and no boy would ever like me because I was flat-chested.  

While the flat-chested thing never actually changed, boys did start to like me and I graduated to one of those pretty, flowered, cloth-covered journals without a lock. When I was 13, I wrote about how I loved Chris, no I hate Chris and I love Joe, no, I love Chris again, now I still love Chris but it’s a different Chris than the first Chris, that Chris is just icky. And I wrote about how much I hated my mother and wished she would just leave me the hell alone, god what a bitch.  

Then I went through years of not keeping a diary. In college, I began writing letters to a fake person as a writing exercise for a class, and I wrote about how I was scared of graduation and I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself and I even admitted that I almost was jealous of the 1950s woman who was just going to get married and have kids. Except that I didn’t even have any really prospects for marrying and providing financial stability.  

After college, I started getting paid to write for a newspaper and that job was never a good fit for me. All it did was sour me temporarily on the whole writing thing, and I abandoned any type of journal. When I got pregnant, I started keeping a little bit of a pregnancy journal, but even that went by the wayside, what with all the vomiting and the peeing and such.  

During my maternity leave, I earnestly purchased a pretty pink-checked baby book, resolved to record those special little moments in Angel Face’s life, like her first smile and her first laugh. My darling girl, however, was born with a hip joint that never formed. Initial treatment didn’t work, which meant she was in a brace for the first six months of her life. All those precious firsts came much later than those of your average baby, and I was discouraged. 

Then, I discovered the online journal. Perfect! No need to sit down with a pen and paper! No pressure to fill in little boxes or empty pages! And things still get recorded. It’s just different. I mulled over starting my own blog for awhile, even came up with my title and talked to my husband about it. Then Zoot posted the Her Hangout announcement, and I knew it was sign. 

That’s how I started my blog. How about you?

Of orchids and eye-makeup

 So, I’m a big crab and I jump to conclusions and I should generally be condemned to life in prison. But not to death, because the dresses were still ugly and my dad said the eye makeup and hairstyle made me and my fellow-bridesmaid sister look like the girls in Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” video.  

But other than that and some general crankiness from the bride and frostiness from the other bridesmaids (and a seemingly never-ending 2.5 hours between wedding and reception in which the bridal party was awkwardly locked in the bridal suite, sans alcohol, playing a me-inspired game of charades), my brother’s wedding was really beautiful. In my defense, the photographer was with us (to add to the awkwardness), and I thought charades would make for some fun wedding pictures for the new couple. And also, I had very little to say to most of the people in the room, the majority of which I’d known for only two days. 

We (most members of my family) were generally dreading the fact that they wrote their own vows because he can be… wordy… and odd to the point of it being painful for others. But I can honestly say that what he said to his bride was eloquent and thoughtful and, best of all, he really meant it. And when she struggled to fight back the tears as she spoke to him, it was really moving.
I bawled like a baby. Apparently, it was very noticeable – to the point that the photographer noted to me that he took my picture whilst I was crying. Thanks for the solid, dude. Appreciate it. 

The crowd was blocking my view of the samurai sword cake-cutting, and I was pretty busy babysitting my drunken mother to see how that went, but I assume it went well because there were no huge gasps or guffaws from the crowd.  While the flights generally sucked, some fun was had over the weekend, including singing “If I Had $1 Million” during the rehearsal dinner with my brother and sister (we’re total geeks), taking silly photo-booth pictures at the Queen Mary with my sister and dad and moping over breakfast every morning with same dad and same sister. 

Things I won’t want to remember include the crippling cough and Kermit the Frog voice (which still did not keep me from the karaoke stage), the hangover after the rehearsal dinner, not eating all day on Saturday so as not to mess up the makeup that was professionally applied at 9 a.m. (I thought it was only the bride that had to suffer like that), the ridiculous flights and equally ridiculous seat mates, the drunken mother, the chilly weather, the exhaustion (I never really adjusted to Pacific time from Eastern) and missing my husband and daughter. 

But I hope I will never forget standing on that bridge in the Japanese gardens at Long Beach State, looking at my brother as he promised to love his bride for the rest of her life and realizing that he is a wonderful, grown-up, honest, loyal and loving man.